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 “The Master Farmer award is
Illinois agriculture’s lifetime achievement award,” said Holly
Spangler, Prairie Farmer editor. “These farmers are at the top of
their game, and this award is based on their entire body of work in
the field, in the family, and in the community.”
Prairie Farmer first offered the Master Farmer award 95 years ago,
in 1925. Editors have continued the tradition annually since 1968,
following a pause initially caused by the Depression. When Editor
Clifford Gregory established the Master Farmer program, he felt the
award would help give farm people a greater sense of “pride and
permanence.” Nearly 350 Illinois producers have been inducted as
Master Farmers or Honorary Master Farmers over the program’s
history.
Candidates are nominated by farmers, neighbors, agribusiness leaders
and farm organizations throughout the state. Judges for the 2020
awards were Karen Corrigan, McGillicuddy Corrigan Agronomics; Ed
McMillan, University of Illinois Board of Trustees; Linnea Kooistra,
2011 Master Farmer; Steve Myers, Busey Ag Services; Dwight Raab,
First Midwest Bank; and Holly Spangler, Prairie Farmer editor.
Some Master Farmers serve in state and national farm leadership
positions. Others chair prestigious boards or serve with honor at
the highest levels of government. Still others build their farms or
businesses to regional or national prominence.
However, all serve their communities – building churches, chairing
little-known but important committees, organizing harvest for a
stricken neighbor – and continuing the service-minded commitment
that earned them the Master Farmer distinction in the first place.
“Every year, we pour through pages and pages of applications that
document a lifetime of work. We sift until we find the very best
Illinois farmers – the people who raise good crops and even better
families, and who build their communities all along the way,” said
Spangler. “These Master Farmers are leveraging every ounce of skill
they have for the greater good.”
Prairie Farmer is published 12 times a year for Illinois farm
families. Established in 1841, it is the oldest continuously
published farm periodical in the United States. GROWMARK, Inc., is a
financial sponsor of the award. Like the Master Farmer award, the
GROWMARK system was born during the 1920s, when farmer cooperatives
first organized the Illinois Farm Supply Co. Today, the brand is
known as FS.
JOHN AND SUSAN ADAMS: READY TO SERVE
John and Susan Adams are well known faces in the Illinois
agriculture industry, as the 2020 Master Farmer couple have
collectively stepped up for leadership roles dozens of times.
They met while attending Southern Illinois University Carbondale and
moved back to John’s family farm in Atlanta, Ill., in 1972. While
Susan grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, she also has roots in
farming, and continues to own 87 acres of family ground in Gallatin
County. Together, they’ve grown the Atlanta farmstead to 970 acres
since taking it over full time when John’s father retired in 1982.
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“My dad and I had a small
farrow-to-finish hog operation. And then Susan jumped right in,”
John says, noting she worked as a teacher for the first year she
lived in Atlanta before becoming much more involved in the farm.
“Susan and I both enjoyed raising hogs, but it kind of limited our
vacation time and ability to participate in ag leadership positions.
We dropped the hogs in 1988 and started to get more involved and go
on more trips,” he adds.
The couple have traveled to 42 states and 20 foreign countries.
Often they left home to represent Illinois growers and livestock
producers, passing by IL Corn ads that featured their faces in
Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. They served on the Corn Farmers Coalition
national organization for five years, dedicating time to teaching
policymakers about agriculture.
For someone who admits, “the only thing I ever raised were hamsters”
before coming to John’s family farm, Susan says she was quick to
learn about livestock management. She’s now the primary grain hauler
and grain dryer operator.
“I don’t have to be quite as active as I used to since we’ve been
full no-till since 1988. John does all the planting and bookkeeping,
but I keep things moving during harvest,” Susan says.
John and Susan were nominated by IL Corn.
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